Is the current U.S. movie ratings system effective?

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There are currently five MPAA ratings: G—"general audiences"; PG— "parental guidance suggested"; PG-13— "parents strongly cautioned"; R—"restricted, under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian"; and NC-17—"no one 17 and under admitted." While most movie theater owners abide by the system, it is voluntary and operated by the industry itself. And while the distributors of most U.S. films seek ratings, they have the option of releasing films without them (although theaters are often said to be reluctant to show unrated films).

Movie ratings are assigned by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA), an organization funded by the fees that it charges to distributors to rate their films. The group within CARA that evaluates the films is known as the rating board. It consists of between eight and 13 parents whose identities are kept private and who serve for varying lengths of time. The board's chairman is selected by the president of the MPAA.

The rating board evaluates movies based on a number of factors: theme, violence, language, nudity, sensuality, drug abuse, and other elements. After a rating is assigned, the film's distributors can ask for an explanation, and can then resubmit the film with enough changes made to possibly alter the rating. If the distributors are still unsatisfied with the rating, they can take their case to the rating appeals board, which consists of 14 to 18 film industry members and has been said to include some religious leaders as well.

The rating system replaced an older system known as the Motion Picture Production Code, which provided a long list of elements that could not be featured in U.S. films. Distributors whose films violated the Production Code could be fined, and, for much of the code's history, most theaters could also be fined. In the 1950s and 1960s, a number of factors relating to the weakening of the film industry and challenges mounted against the system led to the abandonment of the Production Code.

Since the advent of the rating system in 1968, however, controversy has continued. Critics have charged that the system is not strict enough in certain areas. Others have said that the system stifles expression, and have questioned its legitimacy. A variety of revisions have been suggested: from changing the way that existing ratings are given to revising the NC-17 rating to make those movies more marketable to abandoning ratings altogether. The MPAA, however, has defended the current system as the best possible approach.

Is the current U.S. movie ratings system effective?

Supporters of the rating system argue that it exists to serve parents and that it succeeds in that role. They add that the system is consistently popular with the public. The movie rating system is preferable to both the old Production Code system and to actual government censorship, they contend. Supporters also dispute some of the claims made by critics. Violence is not treated more leniently than other elements, they say. And they deny that studio films get better treatment, saying that the rating board may treat a scene in one film differently from a similar scene in another film based on a variety of factors.

Opponents contend that film ratings have grown more lenient. Another complaint relates to violence in particular, with critics charging that the rating system treats it much less severely than it treats sex. Critics argue that not enough is done about cigarettes in movies, which they say can influence children to begin smoking. Other opponents maintain that because many theaters are reluctant to show NC-17 movies, economic necessity often forces filmmakers to edit films so that they do not receive that rating, creating a chilling effect on artistic freedom. They insist that the rating system is biased against smaller, independent films, and they charge that the rating process is overly secretive and vague.

Supporters Argue: Rating System is Effective
Supporters of the movie rating system say that it serves a very specific and practical purpose; it allows parents to make informed decisions about what to allow their children to see. "The basic mission of the rating system is a simple one: to offer parents some advance information about movies so that parents can decide what movies they want their children to see or not to see," Valenti writes on the CARA Web site.

Supporters add that while the system is often criticized for being simplistic, its lack of complexity is part of what makes it valuable, as is illustrated by the fact that much of the public is familiar with its designations. "One of the reasons why the movie rating system has lasted is its simplicity," Valenti writes. Supporters add that parents who want more detailed information can find it in movie reviews or on Web sites such as ScreenIt.com. The ratings are meant to give more general information, they contend.

The effectiveness of the rating system is demonstrated by its popularity, advocates maintain. Valenti reports that a 2005 poll conducted by the MPAA found that 79 percent of parents with children under the age of 13 find movie ratings "very useful" or "fairly useful."

Proponents insist that the rating board does not actually engage in censorship. Rather than trying to block content, the board simply assigns each film a rating based on its content, they say. The decision to edit scenes to obtain a different rating is up to the filmmakers, not the board, they maintain. "We never, contrary to what you may have heard, say, 'Take this out, take that out,'" CARA chairwoman Joan Graves told the Associated Press.

Defenders of the system argue that its voluntary nature sets it apart from government censorship, such as the local boards and laws that previously existed in the United States. The current code is also preferable, they argue, to the Production Code, particularly during the height of studio power in the 1930s and 1940s, when studio-owned theaters barred films that did not meet the code's standards. The current rating system avoids such problems, they assert.

Supporters also dispute some of the claims made by the rating system's critics. They deny that the rating board is lenient toward violence in comparison to sex. According to Valenti, the board has on many occasions given a film an NC-17 rating for violence, but filmmakers in such cases often choose to make the necessary changes to get an R. "Contrary to popular notion, violence is not treated more leniently than any of the other material," Valenti writes.

Supporters also dispute the idea that the rating system gives preference to studio films over independent ones. The rating board takes the context of controversial scenes into account, they say, meaning that it is more likely to offer advice on how to edit a film with an isolated incident of sex or violence than on how to edit one filled with such scenes. That can mean that different films are given different levels of assistance in changing their ratings, they say. "Everybody can get feedback," MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards told USA Today. "Now, if the film is blatantly one rating or the other, we don't get into providing that because editing and changing the whole content is not our business."

Some supporters also dispute claims that the NC-17 rating is dysfunctional. For instance, NATO president John Fithian says that not as many theaters refuse to show NC-17 movies as is commonly believed. "I think the concept that a lot of theaters won't play NC-17 is almost entirely myth," he told CNN.

Opponents Argue: Rating System is Not Effective
Some critics of the movie rating system argue that it has become more permissive in recent years. The system, they contend, has been undergoing "ratings creep," with rating categories featuring elements that would have previously been confined to more restrictive ratings. For instance, they cite a 2004 study by the Harvard School of Public Health, which examined 1,906 films released between 1992 and 2003 and found that sex, violence, and profanity had increased in PG-13 movies, and that sex and profanity had increased in R-rated movies. The study also found an increase in objectionable content in PG-rated films during that time period. "The findings demonstrate that ratings creep has occurred over the last decade and that today's movies contain significantly more violence, sex and profanity on average than movies of the same rating a decade ago," Kimberly Thompson, who co-authored the study, explained in a press release.

The movie rating system is often inconsistent in how it chooses to rate films, critics add. They point to a study by Luci Jenkins, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, which looked at violence in top-grossing films over the course of a single year in the 1990s. The study found that a PG-13 film could be more violent than the average R-rated film. "The system is not segmenting these categories, at least on the parameter of violence, in any cohesive way," Theresa Webb, who worked as a researcher on the study, told National Public Radio (NPR).

Critics contend that there is a double standard in how the system treats sex and violence. Critics charge that the rating board is much more lenient toward violent movies than toward sexually explicit ones. They argue that it is violence, not sex, that the board should be most concerned about exposing children to, because violent movies send a message that conflicts should be resolved through aggression.

Similarly, some critics charge that the rating system is not hard enough on smoking in movies. They note that the MPAA has indicated that the use of alcohol or illegal drugs can influence a film's rating, and they contend that cigarette use should be a factor as well. As an indication of the harmful effects of smoking in movies, they point to a 2005 study by James Sargent of Dartmouth Medical School, who interviewed 6,522 children between the ages of 10 and 14. Taking other variables into account, Sargent estimated that 38 percent of those who had tried smoking had done so because they had seen actors in movies smoking.

Another complaint is that the rating system censors filmmakers. Opponents argue that theaters often refuse to show NC-17 movies, many newspapers will not run advertisements for them, and stores such as Wal-Mart and Blockbuster Video will not carry them on DVD. For that reason, critics argue, serious films that push boundaries become unmarketable. On the other hand, if a film is edited to avoid an NC-17 rating, it becomes a "hard R," exposing children to risqué material, they say. Turning NC-17 films into R-rated ones "has the effect not only of compromising filmmakers' visions but also greatly increasing the likelihood that adult-oriented movies are seen by the very groups for which they are not intended," the Directors Guild of America wrote in a statement.

Critics charge that the rating system tends to favor studio films over independent features. Smaller films may not have the budget to make the reedits necessary to avoid a particular rating, they say. Some even allege that the rating board gives preferential treatment to studio films, for instance by telling studio filmmakers exactly what they must do to get a more acceptable rating.

Opponents also accuse the rating board of excessive secrecy. The board members are an unknown group of people who use vague criteria for judging films, they say. "The rating system operates largely in secret, so it's always sort of a mystery and negotiation as far as what kind of content causes harsher ratings and how those ratings are determined," Eddie Schmidt, producer of This Film Is Not Yet Rated, has said.

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• Wilson, Barbara J., What’s Wrong with the Ratings?, Center for Media Literacy
• Abrams, Simon, The Persistent Trouble with Movie Ratings (2018), Vanity Fair
• Dick, Kirby, America’s Film Rating System Is a Sham (2006), ABC News
• Holpuch, Amanda, Study shows US film ratings barely distinguish between levels of violence (2013), The Guardian
• Dick, Kirby, Rated R for Ridiculous (2007), LA Times
• Anderson-Moore, Oakley, Is the MPAA Rating System Broken? A Brief History of Sex and Violence in American Films (2014), No Film School
• Scribner, Herb, Little difference between PG-13 and R-rated films, study says (2013), Deseret News
• Zuckerman, Esther, Once Again, Movie Ratings Make No Sense (2013), The Atlantic
• Kilkenny, Katie, A Brief History of Increasingly Violent PG-13 Films (2016), Pacific Standard